Location-based technology is not new, yet we definitely seem to be getting closer and closer to the proverbial "tornado" as location-savvy technology providers are emerging and innovating at a faster rate than ever before.
The space has really caught fire as of late due to combining location-aware technology with social network applications and the pervasiveness of smartphones. This combination has really provided the foundation for the space to flourish. And it has. Companies like Where.com, PlacePop, Placecast.net, and Urban Mapping are just a few examples of small companies with big plans and with geolocation at the heart of their business models.
Also, user-initiated, location-revealing "checking in" seems to be the latest craze, as Web applications such as FourSquare, GoWalla, and BrightKite are competing heavily, enabling an individual to see who they might know is also in attendance at an event. This can also help in the discovery of new places and meeting new people. The group location review site Yelp has recently added check-in capabilities as well.
And of course the likely suspects are in on the land rush too. Google's Latitude tells others that you allow to know your current location as you move about. Facebook and Twitter are rolling out location-based features as well, and Yahoo has already done an acquisition in the space with Indonesian-based Koprol (the "Asian FourSquare"). Even location-based games such as Booyah's MyTown are on the upswing.
Now that the technology exists, the value is fairly obvious. Clearly it makes sense for a travel company to provide trip-related content specific to a site visitor's nearest airport. As preseason football magazines discovered long ago with their regional magazine covers, locally relevant headlines are more likely to get attention (and therefore clicked), especially with sports teams and news. And there are clearly regional differences in product interest. Earthquake preparedness for example is probably much more eye-catching in Northern California than say hurricane preparedness which will resonate more in the Carolinas.
Remember all of those frequent membership cards the local sandwich shops hand out so you can get a free sandwich every seventh visit? Unless you are living by the penny, they are just too much of a hassle to carry around and manage. However, in a geo-savvy smartphone world, they should become unnecessary. A store ought to have the ability to keep track, with permission and incentives of course, of who is frequenting their stores and purchasing habits, and reward appropriately.
The customer loyalty possibilities are endless. Imagine the local ice cream shop being able to determine at the press of a button who its top twenty-five customers are, and hand delivering to these customers on their birthday an ice cream cake based on their flavor history.
Software companies are also using IP address-oriented technology to ensure location-based license compliance. MLB TV is using it to enforce blackout restrictions for watching streaming broadcasts of Major League Baseball. Business Intelligence applications are also integrating these types of products to gather site trending information, geographical response to offers, customer base location, and more. The use case list is practically endless.
However, there are still some challenges that don't make things entirely easy. Most Web applications are using
IP address related technologies and API's to determine location when someone visits a site, and then providing location-specific content to the visitor. However, this is problematic for browser-based smartphones, as they will typically show the IP address for the location of the carrier's hosting servers rather than the location of the smartphone.
For example, the location for a Blackberry will show as Toronto when using standard IP address-based technology, which is where RIM, the creator of the Blackberry, is headquartered. Of course, this is not useful for location-specific custom content on the device's browser.
Instead, smartphones are using carrier-specific location services or built-in GPS to determine location and therefore require user permission (they are usually prompted) for location to be used. This can make application development for location-based applications to become more complex with different requirements for different devices, and require device-specific applications to be built.
Auto-determined location-specific content can be dangerous however with search engine robots if sites are not implemented correctly with location-specific URLS (which sometimes requires performance trade offs) as robots will only see the content for the location of the servers from which they happen to be crawling from, and only index as much. This can hurt traffic potential.
Also, latitude and longitude coordinates can be obtained from site visitor-provided addresses to determine more precise locations. This of course provides for a whole new slate of use cases, and actually has been around for awhile.
All in all, despite some of the challenges that exist, powerful location-based technologies will continue to become increasingly sophisticated, and location-based applications will become more and more a part of our lives. Look for a lot to happen in this space in the next 12-24 months.
There are several great reasons for integrating live foreign currency exchange rates into applications and Websites, especially since it is so easy and cost-effective to do.
For example, Melissa Smith of retailcustomerexperience.com
reported this month that online retailers are seeing as much as a 25% online sales gain by showing prices in local currencies when utilizing a visitor's browser or
IP address to determine location.
Also, companies with a global presence can track expenses such as media costs and the corresponding sales revenue associated with those media costs using current exchange rates, especially when the expenses are being paid out of foreign accounts. Using accurate daily rates prevents these costs and sales numbers from being misleading due to global currency swings, or specific currencies trending up or down over certain periods of time. This also enables decision makers to better gauge success or failure with international advertising campaigns.
This is not only true with advertising costs, but any international sales or accounting reports can have a degree of consistency to them when they are unified using a single, accurate currency rate. This is important because (and especially lately) fluctuations between the US Dollar and the Euro for example can be 5% or more in a given month, and can see 20% fluctuations in a year. This is also true of many other currencies relative to each other as well.
One possible solution is to manually obtain current foreign exchange rates from the Web and plug them into your Website content management system on a periodic basis. However, this can be a hassle, requires manual work, and if not done often enough can lead to serious accuracy problems.
Another is to screen-scrape rates from various Websites via a script of some kind. This may cause legal complications, as well as run the risk of scripts breaking and having to be re-implemented when the source Websites change.
There are also other vendors offering currency rate tables via CSV files for purchase that also require these rates to be stored, managed, and maintained and can add significant process complexity into application or Website development cycles.
The best way to integrate foreign exchange rates (as with most data that changes frequently) is to utilize a SOAP or REST-based Web service where the current rate is retrieved wherever and whenever it is required for a calculation. This ensures the greatest possible accuracy, and eliminates manual processing and the costs associated with maintaining, storing, and updating currency rate tables. It also requires no hardware or software to be purchased, and essentially enables the plucking of currency rates from the "Cloud" when required. It is benefits like these that are causing the current surge in cloud computing.
And since this approach uses an API, the currency rates can be integrated into anything that can consume a Web service, including popular SAAS applications such as Salesforce.com, ecommerce applications such as Magento, and into smartphone devices such as the iPhone and Android platforms. And, depending of course on the platform, the integration can be achieved with just a few simple lines of code.
StrikeIron's Foreign Currency Rates Web Service API carries current exchange rates for over 160 currencies that are updated every thirty minutes throughout each business day. These rates are aggregated from a variety of global banks and currency markets. Historical rates back to 2004 based on the London close are also provided.
There is a lot of commerce occurring around the globe. When it can be simple, straight-forward, and cost-effective to implement foreign currency rates into any application, Website, or business process, using them ought to fall into the "no-brainer" category.
Acquisitions of companies such as Sun, BEA, Peoplesoft, Cognos, Siebel, Business Objects, and countless others the past few years have created a competition vacuum in the enterprise software space. For example, in the last five years or so, Oracle has spent over thirty billion USD purchasing nearly sixty companies. Microsoft has gobbled up eighty or so, IBM sixty, EMC forty and Hewlett-Packard approximately thirty-five. And these are just the giants.
The next tier of enterprise software companies also have pretty long lists of recent acquisitions. So one can imagine quite easily that this collective buying spree has created a deep void in the landscape of enterprise software, and as a result creates a tremendous opportunity.
After all, not much has happened in terms of new products and innovation in the space in the past several years, save for a handful of companies such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite and some of the various SAAS and open sources models that have emerged. But even much of this is nearing the ten year mark.
Interestingly, some of the Fortune 500 have annual I.T. budgets north of a billion dollars per year. And those that don't have budgets that are indeed quite large. This, combined with the fact that many of their primary systems were built and deployed in the 1990's (yes that's ten to twenty years ago) and are getting a bit "long in the tooth" as they say of aging horses, creates an interesting set of dynamics.
In addition, Cloud infrastructure is maturing and getting more firmly in place with more efficient computing resource and data storage models. It is quickly becoming the seedbed for future enterprise software innovation, not only in new software categories, but also in the traditional categories of business intelligence, analytics, data management, and employee and customer-facing applications.
All of these trends point to a "perfect storm" of opportunity. Their alignment ought to be attractive to a new wave of entrepreneurs that can take advantage of the emerging Cloud Computing trend in new and exciting ways. This will enable a great deal of new innovation in the enterprise/corporate information technology space.
So while much of the technology press is caught up in all of the Android-iPhone rage, Facebook privacy issues, and the Groupons and Four Squares of the world, quietly many technology veterans are taking notice of this enterprise software void and recognizing the opportunity for what it is.
As one example, Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame has recently indicated that his venture capital firm is investing in a "new wave" of enterprise software companies. Others are sure to follow this trend of focus including both entrepreneurs and investors.
In other words, I don't subscribe to the opinion held by some that enterprise software is dead. So over the next couple of years, I do expect a wave of new enterprise software companies to emerge, setting off another arms race in the corporate I.T. space as organizations battle it out to stay a step ahead of their competition.
Fortunately, companies like StrikeIron with our data-as-a-service external data and data verification components can benefit extensively from this trend, providing important pieces to these emerging applications with ease.
It should be exciting times ahead.
Cloud computing is growing at a fast pace and will continue to do so for quite some time. The Gartner Group for example has projected a tripling of the market in the next five years, and almost everyone else is projecting some level of super-charged growth in the space. Now of course, this all depends on what you include or don't include in your definition of cloud computing (Google Apps for example). As long as you are consistent in your personal definition, the growth ought to be of a similar magnitude.
The reasons for this growth are the advantages that cloud computing provides, including faster deployment, smoother scalability, pay-for-what-you-use business models, and no capital expenditure on the hardware and software that comprises the architecture. Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Opsource, and Rackspace are all companies offering public cloud infrastructure for rent, and a myriad of vendors have lined up to add layers of capabilities on top of these offerings such as RightScale, and the ecosystems that can take advantage of these architectures such as
StrikeIron's are continuing to invest in the space as well. Unfortunately Sun's promising efforts in this space have been discontinued by Oracle for one reason or another.
This public computing resource trend has been great for startups because new companies can launch on cloud infrastructure "virtually" overnight, without the traditional costs tied to software, hardware, and the management of those resources, which traditionally has required them to seek and spend time on obtaining private funding. Reducing startup "start friction" has in turn created a bubbling sea of innovation as of late.
However, there has been more reluctance in the enterprise space to move to the "Cloud" because of worries about security and losing control when utilizing these public resources. There are just some highly-valued sets of data and mission-critical business processes that many organizations just don't want to put in the hands of a third party.
As a result, many of these companies are now building out their own "private cloud" infrastructure that mirrors the public clouds in functionality. This "member-only" infrastructure can then be shared across business units and geographies in an effort to eliminate IT redundancy, reduce costs, and increase efficiency, just as public clouds do for the masses.
Because of this trend, many of the cloud infrastructure providers are now offering virtual private capabilities. For example, Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) is in an effort to provide a "hybrid" solution for enterprises building out a private cloud where some public computing resources can be utilized where it makes sense to do so.
What's still not clear though is what actual separation of data on the actual public cloud servers really occurs, rendering the concept by some as an exercise in marketing, at least so far. However, the enterprise market for cloud computing is potentially huge, so I am expecting a lot more to occur in this space.
There definitely are solid cases to be made for both public and private clouds (as well as hybrid solutions), so my guess is these two will co-exist for quite some time, and the line as to what separates the two will be somewhat blurred (as usual). The end result will be that whatever route or combination of routes companies employ in the new age of the Cloud, these efforts will leave more resources available for actual innovation rather than infrastructure management and a repetitive IT exercises, and that can only be good for us all, right?
Location-based technology is not new, yet we definitely seem to be getting closer and closer to the proverbial "tornado" as location-savvy technology providers are emerging and innovating at a faster rate than ever before.
The space has really caught fire as of late due to combining location-aware technology with social network applications and the pervasiveness of smartphones. This combination has really provided the foundation for the space to flourish. And it has. Companies like Where.com, PlacePop, Placecast.net, and Urban Mapping are just a few examples of small companies with big plans and with geolocation at the heart of their business models.
Also, user-initiated, location-revealing "checking in" seems to be the latest craze, as Web applications such as FourSquare, GoWalla, and BrightKite are competing heavily, enabling an individual to see who they might know is also in attendance at an event. This can also help in the discovery of new places and meeting new people. The group location review site Yelp has recently added check-in capabilities as well.
And of course the likely suspects are in on the land rush too. Google's Latitude tells others that you allow to know your current location as you move about. Facebook and Twitter are rolling out location-based features as well, and Yahoo has already done an acquisition in the space with Indonesian-based Koprol (the "Asian FourSquare"). Even location-based games such as Booyah's MyTown are on the upswing.
Now that the technology exists, the value is fairly obvious. Clearly it makes sense for a travel company to provide trip-related content specific to a site visitor's nearest airport. As preseason football magazines discovered long ago with their regional magazine covers, locally relevant headlines are more likely to get attention (and therefore clicked), especially with sports teams and news. And there are clearly regional differences in product interest. Earthquake preparedness for example is probably much more eye-catching in Northern California than say hurricane preparedness which will resonate more in the Carolinas.
Remember all of those frequent membership cards the local sandwich shops hand out so you can get a free sandwich every seventh visit? Unless you are living by the penny, they are just too much of a hassle to carry around and manage. However, in a geo-savvy smartphone world, they should become unnecessary. A store ought to have the ability to keep track, with permission and incentives of course, of who is frequenting their stores and purchasing habits, and reward appropriately.
The customer loyalty possibilities are endless. Imagine the local ice cream shop being able to determine at the press of a button who its top twenty-five customers are, and hand delivering to these customers on their birthday an ice cream cake based on their flavor history.
Software companies are also using IP address-oriented technology to ensure location-based license compliance. MLB TV is using it to enforce blackout restrictions for watching streaming broadcasts of Major League Baseball. Business Intelligence applications are also integrating these types of products to gather site trending information, geographical response to offers, customer base location, and more. The use case list is practically endless.
However, there are still some challenges that don't make things entirely easy. Most Web applications are using IP address related technologies and API's to determine location when someone visits a site, and then providing location-specific content to the visitor. However, this is problematic for browser-based smartphones, as they will typically show the IP address for the location of the carrier's hosting servers rather than the location of the smartphone.
For example, the location for a Blackberry will show as Toronto when using standard IP address-based technology, which is where RIM, the creator of the Blackberry, is headquartered. Of course, this is not useful for location-specific custom content on the device's browser.
Instead, smartphones are using carrier-specific location services or built-in GPS to determine location and therefore require user permission (they are usually prompted) for location to be used. This can make application development for location-based applications to become more complex with different requirements for different devices, and require device-specific applications to be built.
Auto-determined location-specific content can be dangerous however with search engine robots if sites are not implemented correctly with location-specific URLS (which sometimes requires performance trade offs) as robots will only see the content for the location of the servers from which they happen to be crawling from, and only index as much. This can hurt traffic potential.
Also, latitude and longitude coordinates can be obtained from site visitor-provided addresses to determine more precise locations. This of course provides for a whole new slate of use cases, and actually has been around for awhile.
All in all, despite some of the challenges that exist, powerful location-based technologies will continue to become increasingly sophisticated, and location-based applications will become more and more a part of our lives. Look for a lot to happen in this space in the next 12-24 months.